Week 2: The English Vowels /ey/ and /ε/

/ey/ -a Spanish-Like Vowel

If your mother tongue is Spanish, pronouncing this particular vowel will not be much trouble. What you have to be careful with is which words are actually pronounced with this vowel sound. Take a look at these sample words to consider:

face race case trace place phase

came fame name same tame

make take fake quake rake

wait rain mail day play stay x-ray

rein eight neighbor vein

break great

they grey

Now that you have practiced with the words above, take a look at these sample sentences:

1. Her face looks great.
2. The famous car race takes place at eight.
3. Wait awhile; it's going to rain.
4. The mail comes every single day.
5. His neighbor's case is definitely fake.
6. They'll stay up late to play that grey table game.
7. The apes ate grapes and stayed by the lake.
8. That lady waited eighty minutes at the table.
9. Kate had a terrible toothache and a bad backache.
10. Gail was able to paint the reddish symbol.
11. Baseball is a fun game for some people.
12. Raisins, baking soda, and flour are ingredients for a cake.

/ε/ = Epsilon

Epsilon is not at all similar to the regular Spanish /e/. Now that you have studied the concept of "lax" and "tense," we can state that /ε/ is a lax sound, and that feature makes it different from /e/ in Spanish. In other words, /e/ is a tense vowel whereas epsilon is a lax sound.

What's the difference between /I/ and /ε/?

The difference between these two vowel sounds relies on how much you open your moutn. When pronouncing the vowel /I/, your mouth needs not to be as close as a tense "i," but it has to be less open than /ε/.

Sid / said

sit / set

big / beg

bitter / better

rid / red

pin / pen

here / hair

fill / fell

bill / bell

hid / head

lid / led

been / Ben

miss / mess

lift / left

mitt / met

CONTRASTIVE WORDS: /ɪ/ vs. /ɛ/

Now read the following sentences:

1. Sid got rid of his red pen.
2. Sit here while they set a bigger table for dinner.
3. I met Ben when he fell on his head.
4. Bitter and better are spelt similarly.
5. This is a mess: hair on the mitt and a bill over the bell.
6. They hid Miss Bell's pin.
7. I've been trapped in a lift.
8. Any egg is OK for the experiment.
9. The elephant breaks the fence at times.
10. Bread is the best food.
11. Seven dead men were found next to the river.
12. I wrote a letter with a red pen!

For some extra information on epsilon, origins and use in the International Phonetic Alphabet, visit the following link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon

To see the actual position of epsilon and the rest of the vowels in English, take a look at these twe pages:

http://www.uoregon.edu/~l150web/vowel.html

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/linguistics/resources/phonetics/vowelmap/vowelmap.html

http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/folkchart.htm

In order to get much more familiarized with consonants and vowels in English, visit this other Web link:

http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

For further practice and homework on these souds, work over here:

Contrast between /I/ and /ε/ http://www.shiporsheep.com/page2.html

Contrast between /ε/ and /ey/ http://www.shiporsheep.com/page4.ht

Audio Practices

Audio practice for epsilon: http://www.pronuncian.com/sounds.aspx

Audio practice for /ey/ http://www.pronuncian.com/sounds.aspx

Audio practice for lax "i" http://www.pronuncian.com/sounds.aspx

Audio practice for tense "i" http://www.pronuncian.com/sounds.aspx